Yesterday I made a presentation about challenges in adopting SOA and BPM in large scale. The presentation was held for a group of master students from ITU and CBS in Copenhagen, and their supervisor, John Gøtze was also present.

I was invited to make the presentation and had chosen the topic myself. It was a good opportunity for me to present my current work in progress - I have made empirical investigations inside my company about first experiences in adopting BPM and SOA and am currently writing about them. The plan is first to make a technical report and then make one or two real publications.

 

In the presentation, I first preseted my view of SOA and BPM, then I described how Danske Bank has adopted these, and at last I presented the case study of using workflow management techniques to automate the manual work process of creating different financial products for a customer, also known as Customer Packages. I told the history of the case study with three different angles; First, I told it from a business perspective, which showed the great success of using SOA and BPM, and it has been a success!. Then I told it from the developers perspective and mapped out all the challenges they have experienced using BPM and SOA in the complete process lifecycle from modeling and implementing the business process to test, deployment and operation and at last to change management when business requirements changes. The last view was how the process participants, or the traditional backoffice workers, accepted the system.

 

The case study has shown that there has been many challenges in adopting SOA and BPM. It is not easy. Previous experience is essential and all participants have gained much knowledge to be used for future projects. 

 

The presentation can be downloaded here